--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "seekliberation" <seekliberat...@...> wrote: > > ...i'm not very full of knowledge on the subject of > socialized medicine vs. capitalist/insurance form of > medical care...
Seek, I like you, so I'm not going to "light into you" for this post. I'm simply going to post a few counterpoints to your points. > I recently looked up the average cost of health insurance > per year for an adult. It's $1800 per year, roughly. Ahem. The last time I lived in the US, as a 50-ish self-employed male with *zero* history of serious illness or "risk factors," my health insurance premiums cost me $600+ per month. That's more like $7200 per year. Then I moved to France, where I was again a 50-ish self-employed male not eligible for the French health care system. So I had to go out and again buy health insurance from an independent insurance provider. When I did, I found that the cost of *better* health insur- ance than I had received for $600+ per month in the US cost me 235 Euros. Per year. Same 50-ish (now 60-ish) body. Same medical history. Different country. Different sensibilities with regard to what health care actually COSTS. *Better* health care and health care providers. So far I've been staying out of this "health care debate" on FFL because it's really not fair for me to participate in it. I currently live in Spain, where my yearly health care -- this time including full *dental* coverage -- costs me less than twice what I was paying in France, 400 Euros per year. You people in the United States are playing "catch up" after decades of allowing the insurance and health care war profiteers to fuck you in the ass, without even using a little K-Y jelly to make the experience less painful. It's not the insurance industry's and the health care industry's "fault" -- it's YOUR fault for letting things go so far. If you had just TRAVELED, and seen for yourselves what sane countries do about taking care of their citizens, you would never have allowed this state of affairs to happen. But you didn't. You sat back on your fat asses and believed the "America has the best standard of living in the world" meme and allowed the for-profit doctors and the for-profit hospitals and the for-BIG- profit HMOs and the for-INSANE-profit insurance companies to tell you "what health care really costs." They've been LYING to you. And you've been LETTING them. The "blame" lies IMO in the laps of those who "didn't do their homework" and find out what drugs and health care and health services *really* cost, and wonder more loudly why they were paying 5-to-100 times that much for *their* health care. On this subject, living as I do in a fairly SANE country, one that sees health care as a basic right, not a luxury, it really is not fair for me to comment more on this issue in the United States. All I can do is echo the Subject line -- "You can't fix stupid" -- and add a sub-Subject line -- "Stupid gets what it deserves."
